Adrian Ivakhiv Authors New Book on Cinema and Ecology
- By Shari Halik & Adrian Ivakhiv
Professor of Environmental Studies Adrian Ivakhiv, who focuses his research at the intersection of culture, nature, identity, religion, and media, recently published a new book titled Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature (2013) through Wilfred Laurier University Press’s Environmental Humanities Series.
In Ecologies of the Moving Image, Adrian deliberates on how motion pictures have changed but continue to shape our perception of ourselves, the Earth, and the relationship between them. The book’s detailed and extended analysis of film history assesses the ways in which motion pictures have altered our understanding of place and territory, human possibility with respect to nature, animal and biological life, and the future of humanity on the planet. The book engages with the full range of cinematic styles and genres, including ethnographic and wildlife documentaries, westerns and road movies, sci-fi blockbusters and eco-disaster films, the experimental and art films of Tarkovsky, Herzog, Greenaway, Malick, Dash, and Brakhage, and YouTube’s rapidly expanding audiovisual universe.
Adrian has also authored Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Indiana University Press, 2001) and co-edited the two-volume Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Thoemmes Continuum, 2005). For more information on Adrian’s research and new book, visit his website.